Israel Nisand, professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the University of Strasbourg, specialist in medically assisted procreation and president of the National College of French gynecologists and obstetricians, publishes a column on virginity certificates, in the line of sight of the government.
How did we do before? Before there were professionals to establish themselves as a valid address to verify the virginity of women? We did it without them. Matrons, often unfriendly, took care of it and besides often made mistakes (at the head of the client).
What is the medical profession doing in this troubled story that contributes to the systemic humiliation of women? What is the medical use of such certificates? What is the validity of the medical conclusions that can be drawn from such an examination? And who asks for them? And what about making false certificates written without examining the woman? For those who commit the package of a gynecological examination for this purpose, what do they write as a certificate when they find that the hymen is not intact? The truth or a written lie?
For various reasons, mainly humanitarian, the practice of the virginity certificate still persists in France to “protect” women who could be threatened. Good conscience is at the rendezvous: Those who accept give the impression of saving women but along the way, they keep them in the most absolute archaism. For this practice to cease definitively, the law must say that it is prohibited, otherwise some will always give themselves good reasons to continue.
Because this persistence of the certificate of virginity is done against the opinion of the women concerned, but also against that of all the religious authorities, none of whom asks for this real violation of female intimacy. What is the real meaning of this humiliating obligation that no man encounters in his life? The request always emanates from the family and this is why the order of doctors had in 2003 prohibited this practice contrary to the respect of professional secrecy. Nevertheless, she continued.
What about an unfounded medical practice that denies, by its very existence, the voice of women? Granted that in some patriarchal cultures there is a need to account for one’s sexual history, it is not enough for a woman to claim that she has never had sex. He also has to prove it. Which means that his word has no value! The parents who are at the origin of this real offense to the body of their minor daughter should be prosecuted for ill-treatment of their child so that this demand, contrary to the dignity of women, finally stops. Physicians are required to report mistreatment of minors. What is this if not real abuse? Rather than writing such certificates, doctors should have the obligation to make a report when faced with such a request from the parents for their minor daughter.
The overvaluation of the hymen in the patriarchal culture has in fact many adverse effects for the women who undergo it. What about those who contrive to have intercourse “differently” so as not to be deflowered? What about the negative effect on sexuality for a lifetime when we learned that nothing is more precious than this small membrane at the entrance of the vagina, which, if it does not bleed during the first intercourse (which occurs in 50% of cases because the hymen is sometimes very flexible) throws a dangerous suspicion on the “honesty” of a woman? How to help these women carrying a very specific and difficult to treat pathology called vaginismus which will often permanently rot their sex life?
Surgical gestures to restore virginity on the fallacious pretext that women are thus protected even though they are confirmed, in fact, in their state of submission to men, attest to the objectification of women imposed by patriarchy. Surgical repair of the hymen, which some doctors even go so far as to propagate their dexterity about on the internet, should be prohibited. The nomenclature of medical acts of social security even coasts the price to 75€. This quotation should disappear urgently.
This (non-medical) activity on women’s bodies where men deflower them, check them and repair them (if they have the means) with forceful surgery on the vulva and the sacrosanct hymen is real gendered abuse. Useless to compare that with plastic surgery because nothing is seen, not even with the gynecological examination. Nor can this be confused with the clitoral repair gestures carried out in an attempt to restore fulfilling sexuality to circumcised women.
Here, on the contrary, we confirm the ambient patriarchy by generating for the women who submit to it, willingly or by force, a psychic suffering equal to what is provoked by the immodest and intrusive unveiling of their intimacy at a time when they don’t have a sex life yet.
A more philosophical question lies in the why of all this trafficking in women’s bodies. It is in fact about a will of control of the fruitful body of the women which is used to calm an immense anguish of the male race. Women have the incredible power to choose with whom and when they have children. No one can run a society without getting their hands on the power of reproduction. In order to have children, men are obliged to enter into a contract with a woman. Not women. What inferiority. In addition, they hold the source of sexual satisfaction for men. They also feel that their capacity for sexual enjoyment greatly exceeds the means of satisfaction available to men. Never mind: they must be deprived of both. It is not women who can freely choose the father of their children and we manage, via culture and tradition, to make them unfit for sexual pleasure so that their sexual appetite can no longer even be expressed, so much is it delegitimized by men. “An honest woman has no pleasure”.
We definitely lose our virginity during the first sexual intercourse, whatever this report (even if it does not compromise the integrity of the hymen because the penis is too small for example) and this is irreversible. Virginity is therefore not the integrity of the hymen but the fact of never having had sexual intercourse. If it is respectable for a woman (as for a man for that matter) to choose, in accordance with the traditions of her family, to avoid all sexual relations before marriage, it is on the other hand unacceptable in our country to dispense with trust in women’s voices.
It is time to end this gendered and abusive administration of women’s bodies.
Appendix: Hymenal repair, the place of doctors by Karima Bettahar – Lebugle and Israel Nisand.
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